Chapter 59: Snake

In a cabin, a dark-haired man wakes to find his breakfast unmade and the old man he lives with already out harvesting. Grumbling that he will simply head back, he sets off. At the guests' fortress, Thorfinn stands at swordpoint and insists Olmar may kill him but that Einar should return to the busy day's work. Distracted by the words, Einar loosens his grip and Olmar kicks him and flees. Fox asks Thorfinn if he grasps that his head is about to come off, then lectures that the trade the guests deal in is death, a thing everyone fears and therefore something of value. He slashes Thorfinn's tunic and draws blood, yet the young man does not so much as blink.

Fox keeps cutting while a pinned Einar begs him to stop, taunting Thorfinn to plead for his life. The dark-haired man arrives and marvels that the victim will not flinch even at a cut across the cheek. Thorfinn asks why death should be feared and what is so good about living, since his years have brought him nothing. Enraged, Fox slices off the tip of Thorfinn's left ear. The newcomer, recognized by Olmar as Snake, shouts Fox down, calls him closer, and punches him, demanding Badger explain the mess. As Thorfinn is bandaged, Snake berates the guests for tormenting slaves.

Told that Thorfinn is insolent, Snake introduces himself, asks the boy's name, then abruptly attacks with his scimitar. Thorfinn's body reacts on its own, launching a high kick at Snake's head and flipping into a guard stance, and he privately judges Snake a match for Askeladd, perhaps stronger in raw power. The onlookers are dumbstruck by the display. Snake laughs that Thorfinn's body clearly wants to survive, then yawns, announces he is returning to sleep, and warns the guests to escort Thorfinn and Einar back unharmed. Left uncertain, Thorfinn wonders whether he truly wishes to live and what living could ever gain him.

Thorfinn offers his life to spare Einar and endures Fox's repeated cuts without flinching, questioning why he should fear death. Fox severs the tip of Thorfinn's ear before Snake, the guests' leader, intervenes and disciplines him. Snake tests Thorfinn with a surprise attack that reveals his warrior reflexes, and Thorfinn gauges him as Askeladd's equal. Snake orders the pair returned safely, leaving Thorfinn questioning his own will to live.

The fifty-ninth chapter advances the Slave Arc in Volume 9, adapted across Episode 27 and Episode 28. The dark-haired old man glimpsed at the opening, addressed only as the old man, is Sverkel. The epigraph comes from Thorfinn as he dismisses the worth of his own survival.